Formed in London in 1980, new wave band Wang Chung scored hits on both sides of the Atlantic, most notably with Dance Hall Days and Everybody Have Fun Tonight. As they return with an expanded version of their soundtrack to William Friedkin’s To Live And Die In L.A., founding member Jack Hues talks to RC about punk, pop, and unrequited prog dreams…
Born in 1960 in Beckenham, Kent, drummer Mark Sanders, who is of British-Belizean heritage, has rightfully earned a reputation as one of the best free jazz and free improvisation players around. He’s worked with many legends of the British scene, and it all started, he says, speaking from his Birmingham home via Zoom, with the…
To say Adorable’s career had its up and downs would be an understatement. After a couple of false starts the band, formed in Coventry in 1990 and led by Pete “Fij” Fijalkowlski, signed to Alan McGee’s Creation Records. NME made their debut for the label Single Of The Week, which propelled it to the top of the indie chart. Problems began whe…
Approximately 11,860 miles away from their roots SIX60 made The Royal Albert Hall feel like a garage in Dunedin on Wednesday (7th October) as they brought their Don’t Forget Your Roots tour to London. In doing so they became just the third Kiwi band to play the prestigious venue.
I first heard this at Battersea funfair when I was about 14 years old. There were groups of young teenagers standing about, all the girls on one side, boys on the other, everyone afraid to talk to each other. This song was a kind of exhortation towards movement worldwide, but that really wasn’t what was going on in those teenagers’ lives at tha…
Born in Philadelphia in 1946, actor, singer and former model, Marsha Hunt, moved to London in February 1966. After appearing as an extra in Antonioni’s Blow-Up, she became a backing singer in Alexis Korner’s Free At Last before commencing a brief relationship with bluesman John Mayall. On his album, The Blues Alone (1967), he wrote and dedicate…
Anyone who loved Pete Frame’s spindly, hand-drawn Rock Family Trees (and who didn’t?) will recognise the value of a man who can join the dots between Wales’ Amen Corner, the quintessentially English Strawbs, Mott The Hoople and Australia’s Bee Gees. Stir in a studio discography that ranges from Alice Cooper via Lou Reed to the Pet Shop Boys…
This was one of the first things that I remember, listening to my mum and my Auntie Josie sing together. Listening to people singing in harmony set me on my journey. I moved to Teesside when I was 12. My mum and dad opened a coffee bar, and there wasn’t anything like that for 30 miles. We had a jukebox and a nice Coca-Cola machine. There were oth…
There have been bands, and duos and solo spells, and sometime bands, and collaborations, in Michael Weston King’s life since the mid-90s, some 20 albums that left a Britpop world in favour of cool country. His latest, Nothing Can Hurt Me Anymore, is currently making waves in much the way that the country duets of My Darling Clementine (with wife …
Other than on the Northern soul circuit, Irma Thomas has never achieved the level of recognition in the UK that her contemporaries Etta James, Gladys Knight and Aretha Franklin have enjoyed, an oversight yet to be remedied.
